


Halved

by Yizuki_Khonsu



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Yu-Gi-Oh!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 12:06:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11509095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yizuki_Khonsu/pseuds/Yizuki_Khonsu
Summary: Voldemort did more than split his own soul that Halloween Night.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This one was actually going to eventually have Harry and Marik be Yami and Hikari. These chapters were simply establishing Harry's development into a 'Yami' and how he and Marik would meet. It's also the only one of my Unfinished works that has two chapters.

Chapter 1: Beginnings   
  
It was cold the night that Voldemort chose to attack the Potters house. Frost iced the thin blades of grass and clung to the edges of the sidewalk and the darkness seemed to carry a quiet dread that chased parets and children alike into their homes. Those few who dared to walk tbe streets did so with bowed heads and tightly clasped hands, paying no attention to the bright halloween decorations that graced the lawns of so many houses.   
All Hallows Eve was a day of power. When Voldemort had first accidentally caught little Wormtail that summer and wrung him of the juicy secrets he carried it was only that thought that kept him from going to their house that very night. Nights like this had power the likes of which Muggles and Muggleborns could never dream of-fools that they were. They did not understand how a simple ritual done on such days could elevate their power and reach far beyond anything dreamed of normally. It was why he had made sure to make every Horcrux on a significant day, and why he chose tonight to attack. This day, the day of the dead, would elevate his power and vanquish his foe once and for all!   
Darkness clung to his form as he approached the door, seeming to curl lovingly about the billows of his robes and blending him the the inky black of the night sky, hiding him from view even as he raised his wand. Voldemort felt his magic eagerly take the shape of the killing curse and wondered if he should be more discrete, if he should simply unlock the door and take his enemies by surprise, then shook his head. They would be surprised soon enough.   
"Avada Kedavra!" The curse eagerly tore through the wood and hinges, sending wooden splinters raining in every direction. Voldemort heard twin shouts and got a glimpse of terrified green and brown eyes before the Potter head was on his feet and blocking the stairwell, wand out and pointed at his heart.   
"Lily! Take Harry and go! It's him! You need to get out of here!" The girl spared one desperate look at her husband before she disappeared up the stairs.    
Voldemort snarled and went to pursue them and had to dodge a blasting hex aimed right between his eyes. He scowled at the foolish Potter who simply stared back, wand still aimed at his head.   
"If you want my son, you will have to go through me first."   
Voldemort let another snarl pass his lips. How dare this insolent worm?! "Avada Kedavra!" He screamed again, aiming for the Potter head.   
"Accio!" A fallen china plate flew off the floor to sail straight into the path of the curse and sending shards of ceramics between the two battling wizards.

The battle was intense and brutal. The Potter Head was not the most skilled duelist, but his bullheaded determination gave him power and his desperation gave him an ingenuity that was usually reserved for pranks. Bit by bit Voldemort was being pushed back to the door. Voldemort snarled in thwarted rage. He was not going to be driven off! He was Voldemort! He was IMMORTAL! HE WOULD NOT BE DENIED!

"AVADA KEDAVRA!" He screamed. The bright green curse bore towards it's target. James summoned another piece of junk, this time a table leg to take the spell, only for the curse to power through the wood and strike the shocked wizard, leaving him lying in front of the stairwell motionless and no hinderance as the Dark Lord stepped over his rapidly cooling body.

The trip up the stairs was short and he soon reached a baby blue door, where thumps and scratches could be heard as the girl inside scrabbled to find a way out past the wards that stopped all floo and apparition. Still hot from the rage of nearly being defeated by such a lowly blood traitor he raised his wand and pointed it directly at the door, blasting it off it's hinges with another killing curse which caused the woman to let out a scream as shards of wood flew past and embedded themselves in her back, her body acting as a shield for the young boy who sat in his crib.

"No please! Not my baby! Not Harry! Please! Take me instead!" Lily begged, terror and grief driving all the fight out of her.

"Stand aside girl! Stand aside!" Voldemort snarled, not interested in this pathetic mudblood in front of him. His true enemy sat only a few feet away and he had no care for anyone else.

"No Please! Not Harry! Not my son! Please take me!"

"Stand aside!" Voldemort snarled through his teeth. Every time he aimed his wand at his nemesis, this meddlesome woman got in the way, insisting that her life would be some sort of recompense for not making sure that he would remain undefeated. If she got in the way again he would cut her down.

"I won't let you harm my son! Please! Take me in his place!"

"Avada Kedavra!" with that flash of light all life left Lily Potters eyes and she was left splayed on the ground the same as her husband. Nuisance dealt with, Voldemort turned to the babe in the crib who stared up at him with large, emerald green eyes. Voldemort sneered at the naive innocence they contained.

"I find it highly doubtful that someone such as you will one day have the power to defeat me." He said, stroking his wand down the side of the boys face. Young Harry's face screwed up and high pitched wailing began echoing through the room as Harry called for parents that could no longer come. The Dark Lord curled his lip at the emotional display and pulled his wand away from the face of the boy. "Still, there's no need to take unnecessary risks." He leveled his wand directly at the boys forehead. "Goodbye Harry Potter," he spoke. "Avada Kedavra!"

But it was here that something went terribly wrong. Rather than powering through the boy and leaving him a lifeless corpse, a golden light overtook the young form and Voldemort caught a glimpse of two pairs of eyes, one brown and one green, glaring at him before the curse rebounded and struck his chest. At once a crippling agony overtook him as his soul was forcibly ripped out of his body. Voldemort fought the process, clinging to his form with all the strength he had, only to have that golden light reach out and begin disintegrating his body under his metaphysical fingertips, leaving his soul exposed and vulnerable in a now charred and barren room with a wailing child. Confused, weak, and terrified of whatever power had defeated him so easily, Voldemort fled into the night, never knowing the full extent of the damage he had wrought, or what he had left behind in his desperation to cling to life.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Emptiness   
  
Harry had always known he was different. From the first time he had been woken up by his Aunts screeches when she found him lying on the doorstep, Harry had known something was wrong. Deep inside there was an ache that never seemed to abate. No matter how hungry or full he was, no matter how sleep deprived or well rested, wet or dry, it ached deep inside his chest and permeated his entire being.

For the longest time he had believed it was normal. Vernon would often grip his chest when he overexerted himself(which was often), and Petunia would always put her hand to her heart whenever the ladies for the book club met at the Dursley house and traded the latest piece of scandalous gossip. But then school had come and he watched the other children laugh and run and play and Harry had known something was wrong. Because these children were fast and smart and ran without care and there were some days where Harry couldn't move for the aching LONGING in his chest that seemed to call for someone, ANYONE to fill its void. It was this aching that seemed to age him, distance him from his peers till even the most outcast groups avoided him like the plague.

Then Harry thought that maybe it was that the Dursleys didn't accept him, deprived him of the love that was so freely exchanged between Dudley and his parents, and his other classmates and THEIR parents. So he tried his hardest to please them. He dumbed down his scores so that he was the lowest in the class. He did his chores without complaint and worked himself to exhaustion trying to meet his families impossible standards only to find that it was never enough.

And then there was Truth and Hogwarts and MAGIC and Harry thought for SURE that this was the solution to his ache. That being disconnected for so long from his birthright had harmed him and left him looking for something that could never be replaced, only to find that even his fellow muggleborns seemed to have no care, no clue as to the painful EMPTINESS that even ten years later had him curling up in bed and crying from the LONELINESS that ever dogged his footsteps.

By the end of first year Harry had resigned himself to being the freak among freaks, unusual even among his magical peers(and wasn't that a weird and scary thought?), but ironically, his first clue as to the ache in his chest came from the very man who tried to kill him. For even though Voldemort was evil and Harry had been focused entirely on saving the stone, he couldn't help but notice how....similar Voldemort felt to himself, how even as the man spoke the ache in his chest, so prevalent in every thought before this, took a backseat to the HERE and NOW as he tried desperately to stay alive. Maybe that had been the adrenaline or the deadly situation, but for just that moment, Harry hadn't felt so alone.

By the time the end of school had rolled around, the ache was back and Harry wondered if it would ever REALLY go away, but as he looked at Professor Dumbledore and his friends faces as he exited the Hospital Wing, he couldn't help but feel that maybe it didn't matter, SHOULDN'T matter. Because despite everything he had his friends, and that would always be something he would have to counteract that loneliness.

 

This belief was shaken not one month later as Harry waited and waited for letters that never came, and his beloved owl Hedwig was forced to stay in her cage day in and out. Finding out that Dobby had been hiding the letters was a relief, but it just raised the question of who? Who had tried to keep him away from his friends and leave him with no one but the Dursleys for company. And why was Dobby so insistent that "Harry Potter must not return to Hogwarts?"

 

Ron and the Twins didn't think anything of it; and Mrs. Weasley was even more dismissive of them simply because of their status as children. Still, Harry couldn't complain. It was the first time he had ever spent time with a family that seemed to genuinely like him, though his theory of being deprived of love was disproven when all of Molly's hugs couldn't seem to make one ounce of the ache abate.

 

And then it was Hogwarts and Home again and even with the dangers of petrification and rogue bludgers and vanishing bones THIS was the place he belonged, the place he felt the least empty in-or the place it was easiest to ignore it. Danger or no danger Harry wouldn't change one thing about his new home.

 

But while Harry might not mind the danger, everyone else seeemed to be very concerned and before he knew it they were talking about Dangers and Risks and Closing Down his home and NOW Harry was worried. Hogwarts was his home and if it was closed down he would be left with nothing but the Dursleys. Then Hermione was petrified and even though he and Ron learned what the monster was-a Basilisk-it came at far too high a price. Now Harry looked down the halls and saw the danger in every shadow that threatened to take his home from him forever.

And then Ginny, poor sweet, naive Ginny was taken and Ron was so horrified and sad and Harry couldn't let his friend suffer like this. So Harry took him on a quest to find the monster, even though they were separated in the end.

Which led to now. With sword in hand facing against a blinded Basilisk, a slowly solidifying specter standing in the shadows and hoping against hope that he wasn't too late to save his best friends only sister.

 

With a grated hiss from young Tom the giant serpent leapt for his form, maw gaping open to swallow him whole. Harry lifted his sword, clumsy and awkward as he drove the blade up into the roof of its mouth, even as the fangs closed around him, one sinking into his arm and flooding his small body with it’s deadly toxin.

 

Nerveless fingers let the hilt of the sword go, even as the snake collapsed around him and Harry staggered to his best friends' sisters side, gazing at her brilliant red hair that made her pale complexion stand out all the more.

"So this is what becomes of the Great Harry Potter?" Riddle taunted, rolling the tip of his wand between his fingers as he feigned bored disinterest in his agony. Harry merely glared, clutching his arm and gazing at Tom with all the hate he could muster.

 

"All that loyalty and power and what did it get you? You're dying Harry. Dying before my eyes. Dying before your most hated enemy. Where is your power now?" Harry tried to think of a retort, but white hot agony seared through every vein and caused the world to turn grey at the edges, blurring shapes even further than they usually were as he'd lost his glasses some time ago. Before Harry could push past the pain of dying by poison, a flash of black caught his eye. Glancing towards it he saw the diary sitting innocuously off to the side beside Ginny's head, seeming to glimmer promisingly in the eerie green light that enveloped the cave. Thinking for only a second, Harry snatched the diary and yanked a broken fang out of his arm and held it over the book.

"It's true that I'll die Tom. But first," he said, looking directly into the specters eyes. "You let her go."

 

A smirk twisted Tom's lips, but it seemed almost uneasy. "Why ever should I? She's already dead, and even with you threatening to destroy me, she won't be coming back so easily. Furthermore I have no...incentive, to assist you." Harry's grip on the fang trembled and he fought to keep himself from falling over his own lap, but his eyes were surprisingly clear as he gazed back at the specter. 

 

"I refuse to believe the word of a man who would lie to a little girl simply because it would benefit him. There must be a way to reverse it. And if you do not tell me..." He squeezed the fang and let a drop of the poison drip onto the edge of the leather bound cover. "I will make sure you soon join her."

 

"Harry, Harry, that's no incentive." Tom replied darkly, smirk replaced with a moue of disgust. "I mean, I know you're a Gryfinndor, but there's a little something called give and take. So tell me Harry, what are you willing to give me?" Tom finished with another twirl of the wand, smirk restored.

 

Despite his shallowing breaths as the poison spread throughout his body, Harry managed to snort. "You mean keeping your life is not incentive enough? It would seem to me that staying alive, so you can try to rise again would be more than enough 'giving' to compensate losing this girl, and preferable to being turned into nothing but burned pages." Tom merely smirked.

 

"Well well, maybe you do have it in you. Credible logic, and even better, a threat. But you see, I'm going to need a bit more than that. Because if I give her back, Harry, what's to stop you from destroying my dear diary afterwards. After all, I'll be quite...defenseless, and I'd hate to be backstabbed."

 

Harry shook with rage, or exhaustion, or from the poison that he could still feel flowing through his veins and spreading frost-like tendrils into his chest, but he couldn't deny Riddle's logic. And he couldn't afford to find a way around making such a concession. If he drug this out any longer Ginny would be dead and he would no longer be in a position to change that.

"What did you have in mind?"

 

Tom smirked victoriously, "Well, besides my diary remaining safely in your hands? Really I should make you find me a suitable new host, but I'll refrain. Three things are what I want and the girl will live. One, I want my diary to remain safe, for obvious reasons, so no showing to anyone. Two, you'll write in it as safety permits. And three... Well, I said I wouldn't ask for a new host, but do at the very least not interfere  if I happen to find one."

 

Harry wanted to punch the smug gits face in, but by this time his hand was starting to shake uncontrollably as he began losing motor function in his arm. It was only through sheer will power that he didn't let Tom see how badly the poison was getting to him. So, teeth grit so hard he was sure Tom could hear them grind together, he spit out the words:

"Fine. You have my word."

 

Tom's smirk contorted into what could only be called manic grin. "Good." He replied, voice seeming to echo and reverberate across the dark cavern as he swooped over to his diary. With uncharacteristic gentleness he pulled the diary from his foe-turned-caretaker, and turned to kneel at the girl's side.    
"Oh Harry do try not to die now." Tom threw casually over his shoulder, as he seemed to melt into the pages of the diary now sitting on the girl's chest. "After all, I'd hate for you to break your promise."

 

With a shudder and gasp all of Ginny's color came flooding back to her cheeks and she sat bolt upright from the ground, looking frantically and frightfully about her at the dank cave walls and eerie green light before her eyes seemed to land on Harry. In a flash the girl was over by his side and sobbing her heart out as she told him everything.

"Oh Harry! You're here! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean too! Tom was so nice and understanding and then when I realized something was wrong it was too late and I'm sorry for all those people petrified in the hospital and and-!" Her babble degraded into incoherent sobs as she burrowed into his chest and cried her heart out. Harry, now that the danger was past, could feel the adrenaline draining out of his body, leaving him even weaker and sore as all the little aches came back to the forefront of his mind.

"It's okay Ginny it wasn't your fault," he said, awkwardly patting her on the head and surreptiously grabbing the diary from where it had fallen on the floor. "Listen," he urged, swaying on the spot as his world went grey. "You need to....need to get to Ron...he should've opened a path by now. Go find Professor Dumbledore and-" but he never got to finish because at that point, the last of his strength drained out and Harry fell over, falling into unconsciousness even as Ginny frantically shook his shoulder and shouted in his ear to wake up…

 

“Harry? Harrry!” Ginny screamed, frantically shaking his arm as tears streamed down her face. “Harry please! Please you can’t die! You can’t!! I love you Harry, please don’t DO this!” Harry remained still, skin becoming as grey and pallid as Ginny’s once had been as the venom worked it’s way through his body. Emotionally exhausted and still weak from Tom’s possession she simply collapsed on his chest, sobbing as despair took over.

 

A melodious trill shook her from her black thoughts. Looking up she gasped as a beautiful phoenix, in the prime of it’s life, landed next to her and looked down at the Boy-Who-Lived with sorrowful eyes.   
  


“C-Can…” The phoenix turned it’s liquid dark eyes onto Ginny. “Can you….save him?” The bird didn’t reply, simply turning its eyes back onto Harry’s still form, watching him with a disturbing intensity, as if waiting for something to happen. Before she could speculate on what, Harry’s form began to convulse and shake. His scar, red and angry, began leaking a tar like substance that let off a black smoke. A single high-pitched, inhuman wail rattled through the chamber, piercing her ears and making her claw at them in pain before the phoenix flapped it’s wings and dispelled the smoke. With the phantom gone, the phoenix leaned over Hary and it’s luminous eyes welled with its previously unshed tears and let them fall onto the puncture wound on his arm. Tear after tear fell onto the wound, sending a flush of color back into Harry’s skin and slowly closing the wound in his forearm. Finally, after what seemed like an age, the phoenix finally pulled it’s head away. It’s wings drooped and it’s plumage looked a lot scruffier and duller now, but Harry could now breathe easy and Ginny couldn’t stop herself from hugging the bird.   
  
“Thank you,” she whispered. The phoenix merely trilled back and nuzzled her cheek. When she let go, it ruffled its wings, before taking off and heading towards the door at the far end of the chamber. Ginny gave a nervous look to Harry’s form, stroked his forehead, smearing the tar-like substance a bit and causing her to grimace, before she followed the bird out of the room.By the time they got back down into the tunnels, the substance had already sunk into Harry’s skin, leaving no trace of it’s existance except in the now black lightning bolt mark that seemed more like a tattoo.

  
  


Harry woke up in the hospital wing weaker than he had ever felt with a tingling numbness in his limbs that seemed to seep down into his chest. Looking about Harry noticed that Dumbledore was standing at the side of his bed looking down sternly at him, Minister Fudge flanking his side with the most hideous woman he had ever seen. Her face reminded him distinctly of a toad and she was dressed in nothing but pink, right down to the little girlish bow that was perched atop her hair.

"Awake at last Harry?" Dumbledore asked. Harry nodded, watching the Minister and his toadie with wary eyes.

"Yes Sir." Harry looked around. "Ginny? Is she alright?" Dumbledore gained a bit of twinkle back into his eyes.

"I am quite happy to say that she will be making a full recovery from her ordeal."

"And what that ordeal is, is what we need to know!" Fudge barked. "We need to know what happened down there!" Harry blinked at him sluggishly.

"Happened? I would think that it would be obvious what happened. Voldemort tried to take over Ginny and nearly succeeded in closing down Hogwarts with the Basilisk." Fudge and the little toad woman flinched.

"That-well-we-That's impossible! Voldemort is dead!" Harry snorted.

 

"Impossible? I think it's more impossible that a baby would be able to defeat a full grown wizard, than a dark and powerful wizard to find some way to keep himself from being truly killed by anyone." Fudge spluttered and crumbled his hat under his hands while Dumbledore smiled benignly at Harry.

"It's as I told you Fudge. Ginny had no control over her actions, and therefore cannot be held responsible for her actions, as young Harry has just proven."

Harry stared disbelievingly at the two ministry employees. "You were trying to send Ginny to Azkaban? A little girl?" His eyes narrowed and went cold "I see."

"Now Mr. Potter, we would never think to send a minor to such a horrible-"

"Just like you wouldn't send an innocent to prison? When will you be releasing Hagrid by the way?" Fudge stammered incoherently, his face going red with thwarted rage, the toad womans' face practically purple behind her superiors.

"I have no obligation to tell a minor the intricate workings of the government! Hagrid will be released and that's all you need to know!" Fudge cried, turning on his heel and stalking out of the infirmary. "Come Ms. Umbridge! We're done here!" Dumbledore chuckled as the doors slammed behind them before he turned back to Harry, his face serious once more.

"I think." the headmaster said in a grave voice. "That it's time you tell me everything."

So Harry did. He told him about the diary and the Basilisk and the desperation he and Ron had felt when they found out about Ginny's abduction.

"I see," Dumbledore said when he was finished. "And young Tom?" he inquired, his eyes turning to the black book lying innocously beside Harry's bedside, leather scratched and eaten away at the edges of the pages from where the Basilisks poison had dripped down onto the book. A book that seemed, for just a moment, to exude a black, malicious aura; as if daring Harry to say anything. "What became of him?" Harry thought for a moment about telling Dumbledore about Tom, about how he was still alive even now so that the headmaster could dispose of the thing and he'd never have to worry about Tom again. But his promise, his oath, wouldn't allow him.

"He's Dead.”   
  
***

Tom was feeling very impatient. It had felt like an age since he had sequestered himself back into the diary, his own self-made prison. A diary was very different from a human body. It didn’t have eyes or ears or even a sense of touch despite being a physical object. Everything Tom perceived was thanks to the little bit of magic he had retained from splitting his soul; and thanks to that Potter brat he had given up the majority of that power since it had been stolen from the Weasley chit. Even his sense of time was shot right now. All he could tell was that he was exchanging a lot of hands, and….was that a SOCK that brat had stuffed between his pages?! HE WAS LORD VOLDEMORT! NO ONE STUFFED FILTHY SOCKS INTO HIS PERSON!!!! To make matters worse, he was handed off to a house elf-disgusting creatures they were-and though it did get the sock from out of his pages he was going to have words with his owner at the first moment available. Finally the diary was back in Potter’s hands and he barely contained himself until he was set upon a flat surface before he almost ripped himself with the way he slammed his pages open. Tom's words bled onto the page, somehow managing to convey biting sarcasm. "Why exactly do you feel the need to pass me off not once but twice? Our deal was for my safety and anominity, not for you to show me off to ever wizard and house elf that graces your presence."

“My intention was to prove your 'death', not pawn you off on the first available dark wizard. No one would question me writing in a regular journal. This will help us later.” Harry wrote back smoothly, the calm magic sinking through the pages and managing to douse a bit of his temper a bit.

Tom let the words sink in, pulling them from the page and into the diary world. How... Gryfinndor. So utterly pointless, mere posturing, but he had no choice but to take the boy at his word. Lucius, for all his supposed cunning had noticed nothing and neither had the overprotective house elf. The boy had even managed to ease Dumbledore's suspicions if he had been able to take his ‘body’ away from the meddling wizard, which meant the boy at least seemed willing to keep up his end of the bargain. But to be so beholden... Tom grimaced, and formed a reply the boy could see. "Since it seems to have worked, I'll let it go. For now."

“So thankful to have your permission Tom.” Harry wrote, trying to convey every inch of his contempt into every pen stroke.

Tom smirked as the words dripped like black venom into his space and absorbed the angry, chaotic magic; savouring it like a fine wine. So much anger, so much contempt, such a shame that Harry was a Gryfinndor, and subtly wasn't yet in his vocabulary. Tom knew he'd have to tread carefully, for Harry, whether he knew it or not, had far more power over Tom than he preferred. ‘Eyes’ glinting with glee at the challenge in the shadowy gloom of the diary world, Tom spun his reply and let it float to the surface. "You are most welcome, Harry."

Harry grit his teeth at the self satisfied answer as it flowed across the page. If it wouldn't go against their agreement he'd rip the book apart now and be done with it, but if there was one thing that Harry prided himself on, it was keeping his promises. So with great effort he put his pen back down to the paper and wrote: So what now? You have your life and I am obligated to communicate with you. What do I do now that YOUR safety is guaranteed?

Tom blinked in surprise, his gloating grin dropping off his face from the sheer shock of it. He knew Harry was a Gryfinndor, but to so blatantly ask his former enemy for advice? This simply would not do. He'd spent far too much time doing that for the Weasley girl, and he had no desire to do anything of the sort for Harry.    
  


Not that he couldn't see Harry's anger and gall at having to stoop to such a thing, which made the situation marginally better, but the principal of it made Tom want to pout unbecomingly. It was just so... insipid.    
Tom's own anger bubbled into the ink, and his reply did not spin so much as explode onto the page in its caustic glory. "What do you  _ do _ ? And here I thought you better than such unnecessarily imbecilic questions. My safety is only guaranteed for so long as you are alive, Harry, so maybe you should use what stunningly few brain cells you have to learn something. If not from me, maybe you should try the other books you have at your disposal, after all there is knowledge to be found in all of them."

 

Harry looked down at the diary, now still and silent save for the words that Tom had angrily splashed across the page like an angry child; then he looked about the dormitory, empty and dark save for him. Underneath his feet the sound of raucous partying rose and fell as the students celebrated the depetrification of the Basilisks victims and their ability to return another year to their home away from home. Maybe Tom was right. Maybe there was something to be said about his ignorance to this world, for as beautiful and wondrous and MAGICAL as it was, it had proven that it was anything but safe. What had Harry done to change that? How had he made sure that he would survive? Sitting in a dormitory or common room playing chess and ignoring homework was not conducive to continued breathing.

"Harry! Come on down mate, Fred and George nicked some real Firewhiskey for the celebrations!" Ron shouted, poking his head into the dormitory and then rushing back down the stairs. What would have happened if they put more effort into their DADA classes? What if he had used those observational skills, so honed from years of the Dursley's tempestuous moods, to notice that SOMETHING HAD BEEN WRONG with both Ginny AND Tom? Harry only watch as the red head left back down the stairs and listened to the cacophonous noise the students raised up when Professor McGonagall swept in and gave every student with a glass of alcohol in their hand detention for the first month of school when they came back and tried to disband the party it was past their curfew three hours ago!

What about next year? Would Voldemort try and strike again? What would happen to his friends? He'd already proven these past two years that he was woefully inadequate at protecting them. What now? Harry looked about the dormitory again, looked at the diary, and then went over to his trunk, pulling haphazardly strewn clothes off the lid and organizing the scrap pieces of parchment paper inside to get at the books that were far too unused. He had two years of curriculum to catch up on and review. It was better to start now before he was back at the Dursleys where the likelihood that his books would be taken from him was high. Best to have a head start.   



End file.
